Utah Jazz 2017-18 Week Six Outlook, Predictions

The Utah Jazz ended an overall disappointing week five on an extremely positive note. How will that translate over to their sixth week of action?

Well, this last week of Utah Jazz action was eye-opening, and not necessarily in the most positive way. The Jazz began the week with a blowout loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves, then set out on three games of a four-game road trip, desperately searching for their first road win.

The first such contest against the New York Knicks appeared as if it would be a likely candidate, especially as Utah held a double digit lead in the second half. Unfortunately, a fourth quarter collapse would ultimately sink the Jazz as they would go on to lose yet another game in discouraging fashion which was also their sixth loss in seventh games.

As bad as that was, it still didn’t seem quite like the time to reach panic mode. After all, the Knicks have been a much-improved team this season and aside from some frustrating mental errors down the stretch, the Jazz really did play well for the majority of the game. Plus, we all figured that Utah could earn their first road win against a hapless Brooklyn Nets team in the next game, right?

Wrong.

It was without a doubt partially because of injuries as Utah was not only without the already injured Dante Exum, Rudy Gobert and Joe Johnson, but it also turned out that both Ricky Rubio and Thabo Sefolosha would sit out of the contest – an occurrence that caused KSL’s Andy Larsen to accurately joke about the Jazz’s “All-Injured Lineup”.

Still, one would have expected some ounce of competitiveness against the Nets who are missing their leading scorer D’Angelo Russell as well. But, no such luck. Utah fell flat on their face as they were absolutely battered by the Nets. After this atrocious loss and with injuries reaching the season’s peak, the #TankNoters were out in droves, calling for the Jazz to simply declare this a lost season.

Then, Saturday night happened.

Who knows where it came from, as Saturday’s contest against an Orlando Magic team that started out the season red-hot was one that I had pinned as almost a sure loss for the Jazz, but Utah came out focused on both ends of the court and firing on all cylinders as they knocked the Magic into next week with a 125-85 beat-down. It was Utah’s first 40-point road victory since 1985, which is something this 2017-18 Jazz team had seemed incapable of doing until last night.

Thus, the win over the Magic somewhat helps to dull the 1-3 record the Jazz posted in week five, but more than that, hopefully it will give Utah some momentum and confidence going into a week six that features three very winnable games. I had pinned the Jazz to go 2-2 last week, and the only game I correctly identified was the loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves. Therefore, I went 1-3 as well, raising my predictions record to 8-9, only slightly better than Utah’s 7-10 mark.

However, even though Utah’s 7-10 record isn’t all that impressive and has them currently at tenth in the Western Conference, several teams in this early-going have struggled to find their way and the Jazz are one hot winning streak away from getting right back in the thick of things. As I mentioned earlier, with three games ahead that seem conducive to such a streak, if Utah can take even a semblance of their performance against Orlando into week six, they may find themselves back at .500 quicker than any Jazz fans might have imagined just a couple days back.